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This volume in the
Lieber Studies series explores how the law of armed conflict is made and shaped. It examines the fundamental materials of the law of armed conflict, key actors and influences, the spaces where the law is made, as well as questions of unmaking.
List of contents
- PART ONE: Introduction
- 1. Making and Shaping: An Overview
- Sandesh Sivakumaran and Christian R. Burne
- PART TWO: Foundational Materials
- 2. Where Vienna and Geneva Meet: Treaty Interpretation and the Geneva Conventions
- Jean-Marie Henckaerts
- 3. Customary International Law: A Transformative Force in the Landscape of IHL
- Katharine Fortin
- 4. Principles of International Humanitarian Law: A New Framework
- Jeroen van den Boogaard
- 5. Soft Law: What is it Good For?
- Michael W. Meier
- PART THREE: Actors and Influences
- 6. Expert Manuals: An Insider's Account
- Michael N. Schmitt
- 7. The Development of International Humanitarian Law by the International Committee of the Red Cross
- Sandesh Sivakumaran
- 8. Applying the Law of Armed Conflict in Domestic Courts: The Fusion of Domestic and International Law and the Question of IHL Expertise
- Yahli Shereshevsky
- 9. The Development of the Law of Armed Conflict by International Criminal Tribunals
- Martha M. Bradley
- 10. The Role of Human Rights Mechanisms in Shaping International Humanitarian Law
- Alessandra Spadaro
- 11. Applying and Interpreting the Law of Armed Conflict: Contributions by the United Nations Commissions on the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of South Sudan
- Yousuf Syed Khan
- 12. Non-State Armed Groups, Law-Making, and the Shaping of International Law in Armed Conflict
- Ezequiel Heffes
- PART FOUR: Spaces
- 13. The Role of Regionalism in the Making and Shaping of the Law of Armed Conflict
- Gus Waschefort
- 14. Between War and the Text: The Pedagogical Life of International Humanitarian Law
- Rebecca Sutton
- PART FIVE: Unmaking
- 15. A Prologue to Law of War Unmaking
- Sean Watts
About the author
Sandesh Sivakumaranis Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, and Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. He was the 2022 Lieber Scholar at the Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare, United States Military Academy (West Point). He is the author of numerous works, including The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict/R(2012).
Captain Christian R. Burneis a United States Army Judge Advocate and an Assistant Professor of Law in the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. Previously, he served as a Trial Counsel and Operational Law Attorney with XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), North Carolina. He earned a B.S. from the University of Scranton and a J.D. from the Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law.
Summary
How laws are created, shaped, and applied is a significant but often overlooked component of studies on armed conflict. Almost every contentious legal question involves aspects of law-making and shaping, be it the determination of a rule's scope of application, whether and how to regulate a “new” situation, or determining which sources and materials to take into account. As such, all who operate in this space - whether academic, practitioner, policy-maker, or legal advisor - must appreciate and understand the forces, factors, and actors which converge to make and shape the ever-developing law of armed conflict.
This volume brings together several key contributors to explore this making and shaping in depth. A variety of aspects of law-making and shaping are analyzed, from the methodology behind identifying principles and rules of law, to what weight should be given to the views of particular actors, to the various forums where the law is made and shaped. It examines foundational materials of the law of armed conflict including the 1949 Geneva Conventions and considers the influence of a wide scope of actors, ranging from States, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and international courts and tribunals through to expert groups, commissions of inquiry, and non-state armed groups. This volume also asks us to broaden our gaze beyond spaces where the law is traditionally created to uncover different types of making and unmaking
